I'm an American writer who lives in Ireland, so I know the guffaws and inspiration that come with upping sticks and moving abroad with a family in tow. I've written two books about my experiences in Ireland, Jaywalking with the Irish (Lonely Planet, 2004) and Ireland Unhinged (Council Oak Books and Random House, 2011). I've written about travel, religion and science for ForbesLife, Discover, Omni, Psychology Today, Boston Globe, New York Times, Irish Times, and the Sunday Times. I previously produced publications on the medical device and diamond industries. I divide my time between Cork City and a cottage beside a mysterious salmon river called the Blackwayer.

3/19/2013 @ 8:38AM1,093 views

Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, And Outer Space Go Green For St. Patrick's Day

What next? On St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish succeeded in casting green spotlights on the Pyramids, Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, Rio de Janiero’s massive Christ the Redeemer statue, Dubai’s Burj al Arab, South Africa’s Table Mountain, Auckland’s Sky Tower, Sydney’s Opera House, the London Eye, and the White House fountains. Less well known is that the holiday spirit also made it’s way to the far reaches of outer space.

The extraterrestrial initiative essentially began when famed Chieftains flautist Matt Molloy befriended US astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman in Houston over a decade ago and taught her some reels and soft airs. That was a good place to start, since part Irish Coleman had seen Unidentified Flying Objects (green?) on Space Shuttle mission 73, which was supposed to be all about combustion science and the physics of fluids – two other subjects at which the Irish are masters.

Molloy, who runs one of the finest pubs in Ireland in Westport, County Mayo, gave Coleman a prized flute, and the next thing you know she hops on board the Russian Soyuz TMA-20 mission in 2010 and begins blasting diddly-aye music back to Earth while docking with the International Space Station. The Canadians turn came next.

“Landing” on the International Space Station a few months ago, “Commander Celt” Chris Hadfield did the First Canadian Walk in Space. A more important star turn followed in February when he started snapping pix of Dublin from “Up Dere” and broadcasting them to our planet while talking in Gaelic. “Wow, I can feel the warmth of the Irish all the way up here –go raibh maith agaibh!” he said (verbatim).

St. Patrick’s Day comes around and all of a sudden Hadfield is seen levitating All The Way Up There with legs crossed before him Swami style and sporting a green bow tie. Worse, he’s singing “Danny Boy” to the Cosmos.

But there’s more. The Irish are beside themselves this year with a project called The Gathering, which is a global and then some initiative to get hundreds of thousands of people of Irish descent to think green and hopefully visit Ireland for about 5,000 new festivities big and small. They’ve got astronomers working on it, too.

The last part, hatched at Cork’s Blackrock Castle Observatory, is to get scads of visitors to craft videos, photos, and text messages about their experiences and send them on to the Cork cosmic observatory. There they will all be encapsulated and beamed via radio waves on to a star called Epsilon Eridani, which happens to be 10 light years from Earth.

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